Christina Schmid
405 21st Ave S
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
In my work, I consider writing as a medium that grapples with linearity, temporality, and the space between text and reader. Originally trained in literary criticism, I appreciate texts not only as evidence of an author’s skill in communication, but as ideas taking form. The “˜texts’ I now consider are no longer confined to the realm of language: they have shifted to artifacts, assemblages, installations, paintings, performances, and still nameless forms of creative inquiry.
My arts writing is a form of creative non-fiction. Unpredictable at its core, writing with art is a critical practice that investigates what visual art can do, how and why it affects us. It conjures ideas and intersects with issues - ethical, political, ecological, theoretical - that surface in contemporary life. The act of meaning making that ideally occurs when writing “with“ art is an active encounter, the resulting text the trace of an interaction. I am inspired by writing that crosses disciplinary boundaries, dares to think outside the box, and thus makes possible new insights and different ways of looking“”at art and at perception itself.
I am interested in probing and articulating the possibilities art harbors to change the way we look at the world, our place in it, and our relationships to one another and the more than human world: writing place, walking as artistic practice, and auto-theory have all been recent research interests of mine.
Educational Background
- Magister philosophiae: American Studies, Karl Franzens Universitat, 1998 -
- PhD: English, University of Minnesota, 2005 -
Specialties
- Writing on the arts, creative nonfiction writing
- Contemporary art
- Visual culture
- Art and Visual/Material Culture of the United States
- Aesthetic theory
- Visual arts and art theory